


I might need you (to make the first stand)

by Trojie



Series: A/B/O Wincestiel Bunkerfic - The Series [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, M/M, Men of Letters Headquarters, Polyamory Negotiations, Relationship Negotiation, Season/Series 09, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-08
Updated: 2013-12-08
Packaged: 2018-01-03 23:48:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1074488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Sam buy Cas some suppressants. Okay, so they may have slept together, but it doesn't have to be a thing, right? They're all just looking out for each other. It doesn't have to be weird.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I might need you (to make the first stand)

**Author's Note:**

> Omegaverse!Wincestiel Season 9 bunkerfic AU. Title from 'Hold Me' by Savage Garden, just to continue to affirm that I have no dignity. Or regrets.

A major and kind of unexpected consequence of having a kickass secret lair is you suddenly have to do chores, otherwise it stops being kickass because it's gross, and it stops being secret because you can smell it from space. Dean thinks the Batcave should have come with its own Albert, but what can you do?

So Sam relearns what a vacuum cleaner is for, Cas learns for the first time how to unblock a shower, Dean spends way more time than he should separating coloureds from whites given most of what they own is khaki or plaid, and they actually have a grocery list on a board on the kitchen wall for when they go grocery shopping. 

On their first run into town after the whole Cas-going-into-heat incident, Dean pauses outside a pharmacist and gives Sam a look. 'Should we?' he asks, feeling kind of awkward about it. Which is dumb. It's not like he ever got awkward about picking up suppressants for himself and Sam. It's not like he ever got awkward about shampoo or painkillers or toothpaste or any of the other things that you buy because you have a body and it needs stuff occasionally. 

'For Cas, you mean?' Sam asks, stopping and raising an eyebrow.

'Just in case,' Dean says. 'I mean. He should have the option. Right?' He's trying maybe too hard to play it cool.

Sam's giving him the side-eye as they go into the pharmacy, though. 'That's a good idea,' he says. 'But Dean,' he adds, kinda carefully, 'You've never … you've never bonded with anyone, have you?'

'Nope,' Dean says, squinting down an aisle that looks like it might have what they're looking for. Lots of discreet little white boxes with fine print on them. He doesn't like the serious look in Sam's eyes when he looks back, though. 'I'm a lone wolf, man. Remember?'

Sam keeps looking at him. Dean fidgets. 'Why, have you?' he asks. Which … kind of feels like a question he should have asked Sam years ago, and now he's asking it in a pharmacy on the one street of a one-horse town in Bumfuck Nowhere, and Sam's looking at him like he's an idiot. This is such a typical Winchester family moment.

'Yeah, actually,' Sam says. 'Jess. No, don't,' he adds, before Dean can say anything else. 'The point is … he _should_ have the option. I agree with you one hundred percent. But I think you should consider the possibility that he won't take that option. Or that you don't want him to.'

He picks up a box and pushes it into Dean's hands. 'Try these ones,' he says, and Dean's left holding a box that promises something about 'discreet' and 'non-drowsy' and watching his brother duck out of the store, feeling like an asshole and not knowing why. 

***

The thing is, Cas came down from heat so smooth and easy it was like a blessing. And Dean has been _waiting_ for it to get awkward but it hasn't yet - they all separated back to their own rooms and their own beds, and the routine from before Cas went into heat; research and hunting, eating and sleeping, reasserted itself without even a ripple. 

Dean doesn't want to jinx it, he can't help being tensed for when the other shoe falls … but ...

Life in the bunker has been like some kind of daydream - quiet and warm and stable. Dean gets to sleep in the same bed every night and cook real food and he always knows where Sam and Cas are. When they go out to hunt, they're well-prepared and they've always got somewhere to run back to if things go south. Can you blame him for not wanting to shake it up? Any of it? 

***

Sam realises that Dean pretty much just left the box of medication in the bathroom closest to Cas's room without saying a word about a week after their impromptu trip to the pharmacy. And okay, he gets that his brother is possibly having a freakout and that's entirely in character and probably not even unwarranted. It's a freaky situation all round, Sam can admit it.

But that doesn't change the fact that someone needs to actually physically hand Cas the box and at least tell him to read the instruction leaflet inside, because if anything Cas has the least context and is furthest away from having a personal roadmap for this situation, of the three of them. You can't just assume he's going to take a hint. 

Sam thinks it's pretty obvious, what's going on between Dean and Cas, and he doesn't want to get in the middle of that, doesn't want to put himself somewhere he's not wanted (any more than he already has), because if anyone deserves a happy ending it's those two, but it's also pretty obvious that Dean doesn't see what Sam does. 

So in the end, Sam picks up the box himself and knocks on Cas's open door. 

'Sam? Come in,' Cas says, looking up from the apocryphal gospels he's been poring over for the past couple of days. 'I'd welcome the company. This task is frustrating,' he adds, gesturing at the scrolls when he sees Sam looking at them. 'And my Koine Greek is … rusty. I'm sure I used to know some of these phrases, but now ...' He shakes his head. 'But you aren't here to listen to me complain. What's up?' 

Sam has to smile at Dean's inflections in Cas's voice. 'I, uh - we got you these, last time we were out,' he says, waving the box. 'They should help smooth out your cycle, and there's birth control too. There's instructions,' he adds awkwardly. Cas is still just looking up at him. 'You don't have to take them,' Sam ploughs on. 'But we thought -'

Cas gets up and takes the box, presumably before Sam brains himself with it. 'Thank you,' he says softly. 'That's very kind of you.' He squeezes Sam's hand gently. 'I will think about it.'

There's a long, quiet moment. Cas is still basically holding Sam's hand.

'So, uh, we good?' Sam asks, pulling free. 

Cas smiles at him. 'Always,' he says. 'But unless you're busy, I could use your help on these translations.'

Sam goes and grabs his laptop and some of his favourite texts, and settles in. He knows a little modern Greek, phrasebook stuff, and he's got a stack of dictionaries Jody Mills got out of Bobby's storage when they were fighting Chronos, and Cas has just enough memory of the ancient language to get them a decent head-start on sentence structure, so that this becomes more like a frustrating puzzle than a truly impossible task. 

They work long enough that Dean comes looking for them, the smell of something good and home-cooked following him. 

'Soup's on, guys,' he says, peering round Cas's doorframe. Cas is still at his desk - Sam's sitting with his legs stretched out on the bed. The box of suppressants and birth control is on top of a stack of out-of-print Bibles. Sam knows the moment Dean spots it because he makes quick, flickering eye-contact with Sam, and looks away from Cas when Cas finally looks up from putting in the final word on a sentence they've been wrestling with for ten minutes. 

They eat dinner and talk about a possible rugaru case in Ohio that Dean wants to go and check out, in the absence of any breakthroughs on the whole Metatron thing. Partway through the meal, Sam's phone goes with a text from Kevin saying he's had another vision - he's not exactly in constant contact, but he does keep them posted. Sam can't blame Kevin for being majorly pissed with them, or for bailing when it turned out his mom wasn't entirely dead, just in ICU in Sacramento, but he's glad the kid keeps them updated voluntarily on prophet news because he'd hate to have to hunt him down again. Hopefully, if they give him enough cooling-off time, he'll come back to them. Sam really does miss him.

They talk about Kevin, about maybe finding some hunts to take out in that neck of the woods just so they can check on him. They don't talk about medication. 

***

Dean empties the trash (still kind of novel as a chore, after years of motels) from all the various trash cans in the bunker, and there's a used, empty blister pack of omega birth control in the bathroom can. But no suppressants that he can see, and he is _not_ enough of a creeper to actually dig through trash or try and find the box of medication to confirm or deny the concept that Cas is letting his cycle ride naturally. 

The idea itches at him though. That Cas is going to go into heat again. That he's gonna let that happen again. And that he's ignoring the suppressants but taking the birth control, which he wouldn't need if he was planning on getting through heat using a toy.

Dean wants to ask but he doesn't want to ask wrong. Doesn't know _how_ to ask, or what the right question really is.

Doesn't know what he wants to hear. Everything's so fucking fragile and almost-perfect right now, the wrong question could break it so easily. 

Cas has relaxed into this place the same way Dean has - still looks around sometimes like he's memorising things for when it's all taken away. If Dean has anything to do with it they're keeping this place, he's got his fingernails and teeth and heels dug in good and tight. But he can't exactly blame Cas for his paranoia. 

Sam's different - it's more like he's refusing to really look at anything, like he doesn't dare get attached. Dean knows that tactic, it's how Sam survived all the schools and motel rooms. They've been here for months and Dean can't shake the feeling that any day now, Sam's gonna walk out the door.

Dean doesn't know what he'll do if that happens. He just wants to latch onto his brother and never let go, but that hasn't been a winning strategy in the past, so.

So Dean pretends he doesn't see. Plays normal, while Cas slides into the curve of humanity, hormones and all, and Sam gets more and more avoidant every day. And the weird thing is they're doing it together. Every time Dean goes looking for one of them, he usually finds the other one too, doing research together in the library or the archives or Cas's room. Always within reach but not touching. 

He turns a corner on the way to the armoury and he scents them, that warm combo of Cas's spicy omega smell and Sam, deeper, darker, the alpha tang that ought to drive Dean off or raise his hackles but never has, not once in his entire life. And then he sees them in Sam's room this time, spread over Sam's stupid hard bed with books and notebooks and space between them.

Just enough space for Dean.

They look up as he passes.

'Dean?' Cas says, stretching and popping his back. 'Are you looking for us?'

Dean wasn't, but he kinda wants to lie.

'What're you two up to?' he asks, hedging. 

Sam shrugs. 'Translating Apocrypha,' he says. 'And bits of the regular Bible. Cas reckons some of the readily-available English translations aren't quite on the money.'

'The lack of precision is frustrating,' Cas says, frowning at the books. 'And unnecessary. I don't understand why some very clear meanings have become so blurred.'

'That's people for you,' Dean offers. 'Sometimes they don't see things as clear as you'd hope.'

'I'm starting to see that,' Cas agrees. He looks up at Dean. 'Did you need us for a specific reason?'

'No,' Dean has to confess. This is probably the point where he should find something useful to do, like waxing the Impala, rather than standing here like a creeper.

Cas smiles. 'Good. I need your help with these Men of Letters incident reports from the nineteen fifties.' He pats the bed next to him, between him and Sam. 

'Uh, okay,' says Dean, moving forward. Sam puts his notebook down and gets up abruptly, stretching.

'I need caffeine,' he says. 'Anyone else?' He leaves the room before either Dean or Cas can answer him. 

Dean kind of gets that Sam thinks him and Cas have a thing going on. Watching Cas's face as Sam leaves, Dean wonders if maybe it's a bit more complicated than Sammy's giant brain has realised yet.

***

Sam thinks he scents omega faintly when he walks past the bathroom a week or so after he gave Cas the medication, and has to dig his nails into his palms to keep himself from barging in there to find out. It's not his place. Cas isn't his mate, this isn't a hundred years ago when the act of knotting someone made them _yours_ somehow. Doesn't matter how good Cas smells, and anyway, there's Dean to think about, if he ever gets his head out of his ass.

But Sam keeps on catching that smell, everywhere around the bunker, heady and seductive, and he has to do something because otherwise they're going to end up the same way they did before, and this stupidity will just get prolonged. It'll be fine. He just has to have a reason to leave them alone, has to time it right. Even just a run to the store would do it - go out, come back, and they'll be too busy to ask questions. The walls are thick here, he can go hide himself away in the library and just wait until they're done. 

It's not hard to work out. Cas isn't taking the suppressants, which means he doesn't want to suppress this, which means he wants an alpha, and Sam's got a thousand and one clues about which alpha Cas wants, and it isn't gonna be him. 

But it's hard to avoid Cas, even though the bunker is massive. Sam'll turn corners and he'll be there, or his scent will, and Sam can't help the way it makes him react. And it's only getting stronger, little by little every day. Sam needs a reason to leave.

He's surreptitiously trying to find a case to take, flicking through news sites on his laptop while Cas is peacefully reading a grimoire at the war room table, and he figures he's still got at least until tomorrow but then Cas looks up and says, 'Your Latin is still stronger than mine, could you check this translation for me?' 

Sam gets up from his computer and walks round the table when it becomes clear that Cas is trying to indicate a specific sentence and he's not going to just pass the heavy book across. Cas holds up the book but Sam still has to lean down to read the tiny letters, trying to breathe through his mouth and ignore the way that Cas looks up at him. 

'Yeah, uh,' Sam starts, fumbles for words, and Cas looks worried. 

Sam breathes as shallowly as he can and reminds himself frantically that Cas is his friend and that hauling your friends onto bits of furniture and having sex with them is something you only do when you've been invited to and that the way someone smells, or smiles at you, does not count as permission.

'Are you alright?' Cas asks, when Sam doesn't quite smile back. (He's trying, he just can't seem to work out how to make his face do what he wants it to). He's so close. Sam remembers what that mouth tastes like and he wants to taste it again.

'Fine,' Sam coughs, backing off. 'I'll, uh, I'll look at this -' and he grabs the book so that he can hold it in front of his jeans as he backs away, '- and get back to you. Sorry. I. There are more books in my room.'

He barrels out of there without waiting for Cas's response and almost runs smack bang into Dean, who catches him before he can fall and probably take Dean down too. 'Whoa, cowboy,' Dean says, steadying them both. 'Who lit a fire under your tail?'

Sam gapes at him. It's impossible that he doesn't know what's going on, that he can't smell what Sam smells, that he hasn't put two and two together on this. 'You need to freaking deal with this,' he all but snarls at Dean, completely at the end of his rope. He _wants_ and he can't _have_ and even more than that he's jealous as hell, because he remembers what this was like with Jess and that giddy feeling of knowing you belong with someone. And there had been moments when Cas was last in heat and he and Dean were wrapped up in him, and in each other, when he'd thought maybe, just maybe, he belonged with them too, but once his head had cleared, he knew it was just a pipe-dream. Cas wants Dean. Dean wants Cas. Sam getting involved was just one of those things that happens, and it's on him to make sure he doesn't get in their way again.

Dean is still staring at him. Cas has come to the doorway too, and they're both looking at him like he's grown a second head. Sam throws his hands up in frustration. 

'I'm going out,' he snaps, and he's about to run for the goddamn bunker door grimoire and all when Cas is suddenly there in front of him. 

'No, Sam,' he says. 'Whatever this is, it isn't for Dean to just fix - just like it isn't for you to run away from. There are three of us here.'

'If I leave there'll only be two of you,' Sam points out roughly. 'Problem solved.'

'Are we having a problem?'

'He means your heat,' Dean interrupts. 'Don't you, Sam?' And that answers that question - of course he fucking knows, has probably known all along. 'You didn't take the suppressants.' Dean says to Cas. 'But you're taking the contraceptives.'

Cas looks at him calmly, looks back at Sam too. 'The information sheet said that it isn't necessary to take both,' he says. 'And I didn't see a need to suppress anything.' 

Sam blinks.

'You mean, you … you're okay with what happened before?' Dean asks. 'I mean, not just okay with - you what? Want to do that again?'

Now Cas looks uncertain. 'It seemed to be a solution that you weren't opposed to, and I … I enjoyed it,' he says, and there's a blush crawling up his throat. He coughs. 'I thought … you and Sam have been on suppressants for a long time, much longer than the medical literature I've found says is sensible, and I thought … don't you want to come off them? Now that you're living somewhere stable. It would be manageable.' He looks down for a moment, then looks back up and straightens up, losing the faint air of uncertainty that could almost be stereotypical omega submissiveness but just isn't _him_. 'I could help you manage it. Both of you,' he adds, looking back at Sam. 'If you want to.'

Sam doesn't even know where to _start_ with that, and out of the corner of his eye he can see Dean staring, shocked like he's been slapped. Sam doesn't know what's going through Dean's head but he can guess it's probably similar to what's going through his, too. Two alphas and an omega, and all unregulated, it's _not safe_. Uncontrolled, real, hormonally-driven alpha rut, it's not like the analogue of it you get from stimulation by omega scent. Or, well, it is, but it's more. Stronger. Cas is powerful and skilled and he could go toe-to-toe in a fight with either Dean or Sam and it'd be anyone's guess who won on any given day, but both of them? Rutting? 

And what if they fought each other over him? It's not likely, but it's not inconceivable. Could he get between them if he had to? It's too much to put on him. 

'Cas, are you sure you know what you're suggesting?' Dean asks. 'Because one of us can help you through heat again, if that's what this is about. You just need to ask, dude.'

'If we keep track of your cycle, it shouldn't be a problem,' Sam adds, getting his head back in the game. If Cas genuinely doesn't want to take suppressants, well, that's his choice. 'Hopefully you'll be pretty regular. And you're right, we've got a base now, so if you need - Dean can -'

'It isn't just the heat cycle, though,' Cas interrupts. 'And penetrative sex isn't some kind of medication I need to keep me healthy, and nothing more. I keep thinking about what we did, and I'm not in heat right now. I haven't been in heat since. But I want to try it again.'

It's like there's something electric in the air, and Sam looks between Dean and Cas and knows they're feeling it too. Cas looks eager, in-control, ready to make a move, and Dean looks like he finally got a fucking clue, that expression in his darkening eyes is the one that always used to mean Sam'd be sleeping in the car that night. 'I'll go,' Sam says, just to break the moment open so he can escape. 'You're practically bonded anyway,' he adds. 'I'll just - give you some space.'

But Cas grabs for his shoulder before he can get out from the space between them. 'You're still misunderstanding me,' he almost growls. 'Sam, there were three of us then. There are three of us now. Ever since I came to Earth it's been the three of us, and we are bound together in so many other ways, why not this as well? Sam, please. Hear what I'm asking you, not what you think I should be saying. If there's any mating bond to be found here, it goes three ways or it doesn't happen at all.' 

'I think he means it, Sammy,' says Dean. 

Cas keeps talking, like he just has to keep explaining. 'We don't have to, if you don't want to. And if you don't want to then I'll start taking the suppressants, so that it won't happen again. But I liked how we were together. It felt right. _We_ feel right. The three of us together.'

And here's the thing about Cas, because he looks at Dean like he doesn't ever want to look away. Sam's seen it from the start. But he looks at Sam like Sam's worth something. He's looking at him like that right now, and Sam can't look away. 

'Fucking kiss him,' Dean growls. 'Or my hand to God, I will do it for you.'

Is it bad that Sam doesn't know which one of them his brother's talking to?


End file.
